Re: Magellan Explorist GPS

Simon Brooke suggested:
HP iPAQ 6515, here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ALAJWI/thewebenginee-21

No, I'm serious. Yes, it's a phone. Yes it's a camera. Yes, it's got a
wordprocessor and a spread*** and a web browser and your diary and your
todo-list and...

And a GPS with Tom Tom route planning software.

And *much* more than I want to spend. Thanks for the suggestion, but it's not really what I want.

I discussed the PDA/phone/GPS option last week with a friend who has one. He was aware of a contract where I could get the same device that he has, with Tom Tom, for £50. The contract was £30pcm, which is more than I spend on topping up my phone in a year. As nice as it would be to have, it's not really worth it, IMO. And I wouldn't be satisfied with the battery life.

Oh, and if you use the GPS the battery only lasts about four hours, so it's
a 'get you home' option, not an 'all day; option.

If I use a GPS for cycling then I want something that I can use all day.

I've had quite a detailed and informative e-mail from Nigel Cliffe about the Garmins, thanks Nigel.

When I was looking at the Garmins originally I fell into the trap of looking at each model and thinking: "This looks good, but the next model up has this feature that looks rather nice". I've now gone back to last week's shortlist, looked in more detail at each of the Garmins and decided that beyond the Venture Cx the extra cost isn't justified by the extra features. So I now have a shortlist of 2 models, the Magellan Explorist 210 and the Gamine Venture Cx.

I'm assuming that the basemaps will be fairly similar for both.

The Magellan is £130 from globalpositioningsystems.co.uk, has a monochrome display, a quoted battery life of 18 hours, features a digital compass and is supposedly accurate to 7m.

The Garmin is £160, has a slightly larger 256 colour display, a quoted battery life of 32 hours, doesn't have a digital compass and is supposedly accurate to 15m.

I've read that if I want to load additional map data then the Garmin will be restricted to Garmin maps, I believe the Magellan is less restricted.

I like the idea of the compass on the Magellan, and the greater battery life of the Garmin. Aesthetically I prefer the look of the Magellan, but that's hardly relevant. It looks as though the Magellan can store more waypoints.

I've downloaded the user manuals for both, I'm going to have a look through those to help with my decision.

--
Danny Colyer <URL:http://www.colyer.plus.com/danny/>
Reply address is valid, but that on my website is checked more often
"Daddy, put that down. Daddy, put that down. Daddy, put that down. Daddy, why did you put that down?" - Charlie Colyer, age 2
.